


The Pros and Cons of Befriending a Cat

by reptilianraven



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternative summary: Merlin is shit at taking care of himself so his friends and a cat do it for him, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Merlin gets sick, Mundane Everyday Activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4052575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reptilianraven/pseuds/reptilianraven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm not taking you home," Merlin says.</p><p>The cat just looks up at him, sopping wet, shaking, and absolutely adorable. It tilts his head and meows, as if saying "Who are you kidding? Of course you will."</p><p>-</p><p>The one where Merlin gets a cat, a cold, the position of Arthur (a position he <i>really</i> doesn't  want), and lots of love and care from various people. Also, Evil Nefarious People try to take down Kingsman via Merlin, but that's all in a day's work anyways. The cat is much more interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pros and Cons of Befriending a Cat

**Author's Note:**

> i just really wanted to write a fic of merlin doing mundane things with a cat. 14k later and ive got this i dont know how most of this happened honestly.
> 
> this fic is gen, but if you put on your shipping goggles, it could be pre-slash for a number of ships if that's what youre after. this fic is also not brit-picked. i am neither american nor british, so i apologize in advanced for any linguistic atrocities that may occur in this fic. additional warnings include implausible technobabble, made up gadgets that would make actual engineers/computer scienctists cry, and the overuse of parenthesis and italics.
> 
> i hope you enjoy!!
> 
> EDIT 6/15/2015: now with a [russian translation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4132698) and a [lovely edit](http://i.imgur.com/fWYeKQI.jpg/) by [answeraquestion](http://archiveofourown.org/users/answeraquestion/pseuds/answeraquestion/)!!!!!!

As a child, Merlin had hated medicine with a fiery passion, much like every other child in the world. Logically, he knew it was an overreaction. Medicines are generally useful, as is their prime purpose. But what he hated was the fact that medicines fucking _lied_. Strawberry flavor? No. That shit tasted like a _mistake_.

This meant that, before the introduction of pills, Merlin decided to go through most sicknesses by riding it out through pure stubbornness and strong will. 

He figures that this might’ve toughened up his immune system a lot. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and all that. Quite a number of pathogens certainly tried their luck on Merlin, but he was never known for losing easily. 

Having a foolproof immune system was really quite useful to Merlin now. Formally, his title at Kingsman is the Wizard, the head of the tech department and primary handler. Informally, he liked to think of his job as Keeping All These Idiots Alive. He was well aware of the fact that most people at Kingsman acknowledged the fact that he practically ran this branch of the organization. There were many in-jokes about how Kingsman would crash and burn without Merlin. He takes pride in that. He’s damn good at his job and he stays damn good everyday. He never gets sick days. And _everybody_ gets sick days. 

He’s forcibly pulled Harry out of missions when he was ill with the flu. Eggsy was banned from taking any missions, or even entering HQ, when he caught chicken pox from his little sister. Roxy spent a solid week in the infirmary recovering from dengue when she came back from the Philippines. Illness gets everybody, even the agents who think themselves invincible. But they’ve never gotten Merlin.

At least until now.

“I’m not sick,” Merlin says. His throat feels horrible. It’s like sandpaper and glass. And then there’s the splitting headache and the runny nose. “I don’t get sick.”

Evaine just looks him over. Nevermind the fact that it’s _his_ office. Her glare still makes Merlin feel like he’s the one in trouble here. Evaine is notorious for striking fear into the hearts of even the most well seasoned Kingsman agents when they drop by Medical. Merlin always held her in high respect for getting people to listen with a _look_. But then again, Merlin had never been on the receiving end.

“Just some slight exhaustion, really.” Merlin tells her, trying to choke down a cough. 

“Do I look amused?” Evaine asks, looking him straight in the eye.

“Certainly not.” Merlin says. 

“Then go home before you give everybody else a cold.” 

“I don’t have a cold. I don’t get colds.”

“Wonderful impression of a broken record, Merlin. Really.” She rolls her eyes. “And to think that you’re supposed to be our next Arthur.”

Merlin winces at the notion. They won’t get off his bloody back about that. “I’m not going to be Arthur.”

“Right, and you also don’t have a cold.” Evaine sighs. “I’m declaring you unfit for duty.”

“Now that’s taking it a bit too far now isn’t it?” He says. Then he sneezes. Damn it.

“You know what’s taking it too far? Standing in the rain, yelling at the recruits.”

“Yelling at the recruits is important.”

“You could’ve done it with an umbrella.”

“Didn’t cross my mind at the time.” He shrugs.

“And look where that got you.” Evaine says. “Now go home before I send somebody to force you to go home. Kingsman can last a few days without its wizard.”

“You would really do that? Especially now when we’ve been getting frequent cyber-attacks?” The attacks are absolutely pathetic, but whoever is trying is not giving up at least. 

“Again, do I look amused?” And no. She doesn’t. Merlin’s never faced the brunt of Evaine’s medical anger, but he’s aware of it. Bedivere tried to escape the infirmary once before he was fully healed, and the next day when Merlin came to check on him, he was restrained to his bed and looked like he knew what the devil truly looked like.

But Merlin is stubborn enough that Evaine stomps out of his office a few minutes later. Only for Roxy to come right in just moments after that.

“Lancelot,” Merlin greets. His headache is throbbing by this point. “How was Georgia?”

“Warm,” She says. “Pretty much the exact opposite of how you look like right now.”

He sniffs and pulls on the blanket he borrowed from the dorms, pulling it tighter against himself. “There’s something up with the air conditioning.”

“Of course there is.” Roxy places her hands on his desk and leans in. “You know why I’m here, Merlin.”

“You can’t force me to leave. The recruits—”

“—Can be supervised by somebody else, the tech department can survive a little while without you terrorizing them, and the agents can be assigned other handlers.” She counts off on her fingers. “You, on the other hand, cannot be replaced. So you need to go home and rest.”

“Heartwarming.” He deadpans, taking a sip of his coffee. It does a shit job of trying to warm him up. “Try again.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I could tell Eggsy.”

And if she tells Eggsy, he’ll no doubt tell Harry. If Harry knows, he’ll probably do something terrible. Merlin had gone to Eton with the man. He knows just how far Harry will go. Spoiler: the answer is _very far_.

“You wouldn’t,” He says directly to her face.

Roxy doesn’t even blink. “I pulled the trigger on my dog, Merlin.”

\---

“Thank you, Timothy,” Merlin says. Timothy tips his head in acknowledgment right as Merlin opens his umbrella and gets out of the cab. 

This is not Merlin admitting defeat, as much as Roxy would probably enjoy that concept. This is just him making a strategic retreat. He’ll go home until he stops looking like death, just enough to get Evaine off his back, then he’ll go back and get through the rest of his not-cold while working and being useful.

So the cab drives away, splashing slightly through the puddles on the road, and Merlin starts walking to his flat.

He could have asked Timothy to drive him directly to his building, but he requested to be dropped off a few blocks away, as usual. After many years in his job, having a place where one can feel completely safe is paramount. And so is the amount of paranoia that comes with keeping the address of that place confidential. A simple precaution, really. His route from here to his flat always differs. Merlin always switches up his backtracking and alley shortcuts. It’s also quite therapeutic. Walking back and forth in different patterns. It gets his mind off of his sore throat, runny nose, and the little reminder of his upcoming...promotion.

Because here’s the thing. After the complete shit fest that was V-Day, after the explosions and heroics, after the adrenaline drains out and everything else trickles in, things were in absolute ruin. 

The world was in shambles and Kingsman, at least from Merlin’s perspective, was brought down to himself and two operatives who were as green as they could get. Those next few weeks were a special kind of hell for Merlin. Between trying to get the rest of Kingsman who’d survived the carnage back to UK HQ and figuring out which bastards had the implants (he always fucking hated Lamorak, if he was being honest), it was up to him, Roxy, and Eggsy to keep the world steady.

Geraint had been thrown out of the thirty first floor of a building. Kay got hit by a bus, and then by various other vehicles. Gawain survived the first wave, only to get killed by the mercenary he was investigating just seconds later. The other departments had fared terribly too, what, with the tech department literally filled with weapons. And then there was the matter of how Eggsy had killed off Arthur, which the prick deserved, but had left Kingsman, already riddled with dead agents with no replacements, without a leader.

So since Merlin had literally nothing else to do, he just did his job. Informally, Keep All These (Remaining) Idiots Alive.

Things after that is a headache to recall. He found Harry at a crowded hospital in Kentucky when his servers picked up a fifteen second phone call that had only said, “It seems I’m not dead, much to my surprise. Valentine was a shit shot. Do pick me up. I think I’d enjoy you yelling at me much more than the nurses here.” With Harry’s return (which Merlin celebrated with quite a lot of cursing and an embarrassingly long hug because fuck Harry, really) Kingsman finally got all of its agents back on home soil to decide on many things.

And those things were:

  1. Recruitment for the titles of Geraint, Kay, Gawain, and Lamorak will commence as soon as possible.
  2. They fix 1/4th of the first problem when they agree to give Eggsy the title of Gawain despite the fact that he failed the dog test since Eggsy killed Arthur, and that proves Eggsy as much Kingsman as the rest of them.
  3. Nominations for the next Arthur will commence as soon as Geraint, Kay, and Lamorak are replaced.
  4. But everybody, for some terrible reason, thinks Merlin should be Arthur



That last point was the worst idea Merlin had ever heard.

Merlin was told that his work post V-day had proved himself the best candidate for Arthur, which he had replied with “Fuck off, Harry. Why don’t _you_ go be Arthur? Let’s see how you like it.” But that hadn’t changed a damn thing. With the recruitment process for Geraint already three months underway, Merlin is running out of time to convince everybody _not_ to vote him as Arthur.

Merlin feels a headache coming on. He keeps walking. The rain keeps raining.

It’s ten minutes later, when he’s sure he’s passed this particular streetlamp three times, when he hears it.

A high pitched yet soft meow.

Then he hears it again. And again. And again.

It sounds absolutely pathetic.

He follows the sound down into a nearby alleyway. 

Merlin scans the ground and he spots it. Curled up right next to the graffitied wall, a tiny black and white furball of a kitten shakes and meows like the world is about to end. It looks about as bad as Merlin currently feels. 

Merlin looks around, not a mother in sight, and he sighs. The poor thing will die overnight if the rain keeps coming like this. The chill will get it. 

“Pathetic,” He says to the cat, walking closer, letting his umbrella shield the cat from the rain. The cat meows back at him as if it understood what he said and is very offended by Merlin’s opinion, though it doesn’t move away.

He looks at the alley again, searching for things he can work with.

“Stay,” He says. “I’ll be right back.”

He grabs an empty plastic takeout container from the ground near a dumpster and a cinder block from the sidewalk. He returns to the cat, who is still shivering and meowing, and uses the block to prop the container up above the cat, giving it a tiny shelter. It’s not much help, but it’ll at least keep the cat a bit drier.

“There,” He tells the cat. It looks at its new roof, then it looks at Merlin. “You’re welcome.”

Satisfied with his work, he starts walking home.

But then he hears the meows again. Merlin hears the meows and it doesn’t get softer as he gets farther. 

Merlin turns around, and lo and behold, the cat is right at his heels, tailing him.

Now that it isn’t curled up, Merlin can see that it’s an absolutely scrawny creature. Fur on bones, really. It keeps walking until it’s under his umbrella again, then keeps on walking until it headbutts Merlin gently on the leg. It meows at him, the noisy bugger.

Merlin leans down, scoops it up, and walks back to the alley. He puts the cat back under its makeshift shelter. 

“Stay,” Merlin says as he steps away.

The cat trots towards him.

“No,” He says as the cat just goes for his leg again. He nudges it away gently. “Stop that. Stop following me.” He says as the cat goes on and does just that as he tries to walk away.

He crouches down and looks the cat in eye, as if that’ll actually help him get his point across. “I told you to stop following me.”

The cat just nudges its head against Merlin’s fist. Its soaked fur nuzzling against his knuckles. What a manipulative bastard.

"I'm not taking you home," Merlin says.

The cat just looks up at him, sopping wet, shaking, and absolutely adorable. It tilts his head and meows, as if saying "Who are you kidding? Of course you will."

Merlin stares at the cat. The cat stares right back.

\---

“Stay. Don’t move,” Merlin tells the cat when he deposits her—and it’s a her, he checked—on a towel he’s laid out on his couch. He’d already toweled her down, but her fur is still damp and cold to the touch. “I’ll get you some things but you have to stay right here.”

The cat blinks and that’s the closest thing to affirmation Merlin will get from the little devil.

He pulls off his jumper and tosses it to the side as he goes to his kitchen and opens his fridge. He looks around for something feline friendly, or generally any piece of food at all. He rarely spends long periods of time here as work keeps him suitably busy and elsewhere quite well. This means that his fridge, and by extension, his entire flat, is usually devoid of food. Merlin is a shit cook. He usually eats out or orders takeaway. It’s practical. Less effort. But he regrets it slightly as he looks at the barren state of his fridge. He’s got milk, but he knows that cats turn lactose intolerant at some age and he’d really rather not take that chance when it comes with the risk of cat vomit. There’s an untouched bagel, also useless. Thankfully, there’s an old unfinished chicken sandwich wrapped in plastic in there too. 

He unwraps the sandwich and picks out all the chicken, since he’s sure cats have no use for bread or lettuce. He cuts some of it up and puts it in a bowl. He fills a tiny cup with water too, and he returns to the living room.

The cat is not on the couch. Wonderful. Merlin is tempted to name the cat Harry just for her knack of not fucking listening.

Then again, naming the cat is definitely something he shouldn’t do. If he names her, Merlin will get too attached. That isn’t the plan. The plan is to take care of her for a little while then drop her off at an animal shelter. Merlin doesn’t have time for a cat. Especially not one with the ability to magically disappear.

“Cat?” He calls out to his otherwise empty flat, probably looking like an idiot. “Where have you gone.”

There is a dull thump behind him. He turns to see the cat trying to climb one of his shelves, dislodging books and dropping them to the floor as she makes her way up. 

“Hey, no.” He grabs her with the arm holding the cup of water, a bit of it spilling to the floor, just before she can fall to her doom. The cat just looks up at him, blinking its little eyes at him in blissful ignorance of the dangers he’s just saved her from. This isn’t that different from handling agents.

Merlin sets her down onto the floor, placing the bowl and the cup in front of her. 

“There,” He says. The cat looks at the food suspiciously, walking around it, poking it with her paw. “It’s not a bomb, it’s food. Eat it.” He pushes the bowl closer to her. “Go on.”

After a few more seconds of sleuthing around the bowl, the cat starts eating, slowly, then with much more fervor. He didn’t give her much, because, again, he does not want to deal with cat vomit. But she seems happy enough with the food she currently has.

With that out of the way, he goes to his bathroom and rummages through the cupboard to see if he still has any painkillers there.

He finds a bottle of them. Not expired, but nearly empty. Only five left, rattling the bottle. He downs two of them dry, hoping to dull the headache that’s been growing since he got home enough to at least fall asleep, and he closes the bottle, saving the rest for tomorrow.

Merlin will probably have to go out tomorrow to buy more. That, and things for the cat like actual cat food. He needs to stock up if he’s going to be at his flat for the next how many days until he at least _looks_ better. 

He feels a nudge at his leg after he brushes his teeth and he looks down to see the cat rubbing herself against him, purring softly. Merlin scratches her head then he goes to the living room where he grabs the now empty bowl and the cup of water, and puts them in the sink.

He makes his way to his bedroom and of course, the cat is right at his heels. 

“No,” Merlin says as the cat walks straight past him and into the room. She hops onto his bed with ease, curling up at the pillows.

He sighs, but he doesn’t kick her out. He just gets into bed and says “You better not get used to this,” when she snuggles up to him. She meows, satisfied and spoiled.

“Yeah, yeah.” Merlin rolls his eyes. The painkillers are kicking in and his headache is ebbing away. He feels slightly better than he did a few minutes ago. “Goodnight.” 

He falls asleep to the soft sound of the cat’s breathing and the slow retreat of the pain in his head. 

\---

Merlin wakes up and feels abso-fucking-lutely terrible.

His throat feels sore, his nose is so stuffy he can barely breathe, his headache is back in full force, and he feels hot and cold at the same time.

He hates colds.

He gets up very, very slowly, to see Cat (it’s getting tiring constantly referring to her as ‘the cat’ in his head, especially when his head feels like he banged it against a desk) clawing at his door, meowing pathetically. 

“Good morning to you too,” He opens the door. Cat dashes out to do whatever the hell it is cats do. 

Merlin takes a shower which gives him chills despite the heater, brushes his teeth, changes into something more comfortable, and pads out of his bathroom. In the living room, he’s greeted to the sight of Cat jumping up and down against the potted button fern that Charlotte from next door gave him two Christmases ago. It was “to brighten up the place!” she’d said. It had almost wilted to death two months after he got it. If it weren’t for the reminder he’d put in his glasses to water the thing, it’d be long dead by now. Why Cat seems to be so interested in it, he has no idea.

It’s certainly amusing to watch, he thinks as he gets a pot of coffee started, because if there’s one thing that’s always in stock at his flat, it’s coffee. Merlin doesn’t get it until Cat starts meowing repeatedly at the plant, almost longingly.

“Ah, I see.” Merlin says. He crouches down and hefts her up, placing her on the fern’s soil to do her business. 

He takes two more painkillers with his coffee after eating the bagel sitting in his fridge, and he realizes that he’s pretty much out of supplies. He needs to pencil that into his itinerary which currently is only composed of ordering food then sleeping until he looks good enough to return to work.

Cat bumps her head softly against his leg. Right. He has to feed this one too.

Merlin runs a quick search on his glasses for the nearest animal shelters while he gives Cat the rest of the chicken from last night. While she happily chows down on her food, Merlin ends up searching other cat essentials like an actual litter box and brands of wet and dry cat food. He figures he should get these too. He might as well spoil the devil while she’s here.

He leans against his kitchen counter, idly watching Cat ravage the chicken, when he notices a tiny, blinking light coming from outside his window.

Curious, Merlin zooms in with a tap to his glasses, finding the light perched on the fire escape of the next building, a completely abandoned structure. When he zooms in closer, he sees that the blinking is coming from a small, unassuming, black box. A black box his glasses identify as a signal tapper.

He grabs his laptop from his bedroom and boots it up, catching the frequency of the device easily despite its frankly pathetic cloaking. From there, it’s a breeze getting into the simple server of the machine. He confirms what his glasses told him. The machine is designed to read and process all information that passes through this signal. The worrying bit is the fact that the machine is also designed to _send_ bits of information it deems important via prior commands to another server. Of course, all the information he sends from his flat is so heavily encrypted that he’s sure that only eighteen very specific people, three of which he actually trained himself, could get into it. Merlin doesn’t dwell on it for too long. He just sends a virus and fritzes the entire thing. He looks out his window and sees the machine’s light blinking violently before it stops altogether.

That’s that problem solved for now. 

Since he’s a paranoid bastard, he runs a scan on the entire floor. When he’s finished doing the dishes, his laptop finishes the scan and tells him he’s got a number of bugs surrounding his flat. This ups his paranoia to maximum. He takes the last painkiller.

There are five bugs in total. None of them are actually in the interior of his flat, since that would’ve tripped the alarms. There’s one tiny camera on each of his windows and two more in the stairwell Merlin always takes instead of the elevator. He tries to track where the signal is being sent to, but the moment he does, all the cameras self destruct their data, taking all the recordings along with it.

“Shit,” He says meaningfully to his laptop. Cat meows at him from where she’s lounging on his couch.

Merlin painstakingly went through all the records of all the other tenants of the building before he moved in. Everybody else living in here is so innocently normal that only Merlin could warrant this kind of surveillance. 

“Somebody’s spying on me” Merlin tells Cat.

Cat just blinks, then starts licking her paws. She’ll be of no help in this at all. 

Time to call backup.

\---

“Right, well. Here’s your, uh, thing.” Eggsy sets the signal tapper on Merlin’s kitchen counter an hour later. Eggsy’s just come back from a mission in Monaco and is free for the next week or two, so Merlin figured he could make Eggsy useful around here.

Merlin looks at the ‘thing’. Small black machine, around half the size of a microwave oven. Sleek except for the vent where the exhaust fan would be whirring if Merlin hadn’t broken it. Looks rain resistant.

“Thank you, Eggsy.” He says before his nose wrinkles and he sneezes violently on the signal tapper. Fantastic.

Eggsy hands him a box of tissues which he accepts with another “Thank you”, blowing his nose. Then he looks at the box. “Where did this come from?”

“Rox told me to get’cha some stuff if I was gonna drop by your place.” Eggsy tilts his head to the paper bags that are lying by Merlin’s front door. Merlin had wondered what all that was, but was momentarily distracted by the signal tapper. “She told me you were sick an’ pretty much gave me a grocery list because she says you’re shit at takin’ care of yourself.”

“How would she know that?”

“Okay, Roxy told me you were sick then I told Harry you were sick.” And of course he did. “Then Harry told her that you’re shit at takin’ care of yourself. So I’ve got stuff for you.” He goes and moves the bags from the floor to his counter. “Roxy would’ve gotten it herself, but she’s sorta busy right now. Keepin’ the tech department calm an’ all tha’.”

Merlin averts his gaze from the bags and back to Eggsy. “Why? What’s going on at tech department.” He says and it sounds more like an order than a question.

“Nothin’, nothin’. Swear.” Eggsy shrugs. “Not like the place is on fire.”

“How many fires have caught since I’ve left?”

“I ain’t a snitch.”

“I’ll find out either way,” Merlin says. “Please save me from the headache I might get if I don’t know this moment.”

Eggsy actually frowns a bit in pity. “Just seven, then.” _Christ_. “But apparently five of those were testing explosives. Those things are _supposed_ to explode. You should develop some kind of mini fire extinguisher, sometime. It’d be useful.”

Merlin tries to take a deep, calming breath. He ends up sneezing instead. The tissue is godsend.

“So what else have you brought?” He asks instead of dwelling on the _seven damn fires_.

“Oh, well.” Eggsy starts emptying the bag. “Some painkillers. Fever reducers. Those things you snort up your nose to decongest and shit. A lot of orange juice, Roxy told me you like the type with the pulp, you weirdo. And some real oranges. I was also able to buy some coffee in Mona—”

Meow.

Eggsy looks down.

Shit.

Cat is curling herself around Eggsy’s leg, rubbing her body up and down. Merlin had locked Cat in his bedroom. He vaguely remembers that all his windows are open since he’d been collecting the bugs. The devil must’ve gone out and come back into the kitchen through the fire escape.

“Oh well, hello there.” Eggsy coos, voice slightly higher. He bends down and scoops Cat into his arms, scratching her head. Cat looks incredibly satisfied, or at least as satisfied as a cat can possibly look. “What a cutie,” He says. “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“I don’t.” Merlin says, glaring at Cat.

“Okay,” Eggsy says slowly. “So this is just. Uh. _Not_ a cat then?”

“It’s a cat. It just isn’t my cat.”

“Well does your not-cat have a name?”

“No.”

Eggsy looks at him, mid cat scratch, and says. “Alright, sure. You good then?” He motions at the bags and the signal tapper and Merlin thinks for a bit.

“Actually, I think I still need help with something.”

“Yeah? What with?”

\---

“You know,” Eggsy says as he pushes their cart in the desolate aisle of the grocery store, kicking up enough momentum before leaning on the cart, riding it till it comes to a stop near Merlin. “This wasn’t how I expected my afternoon goin’.”

“Are you complaining?” Merlin says as he compares two different brands of wet cat food. One of them very enthusiastically boasts about all the vitamins and minerals! Your cat will love it! He decides to put his faith in the exclamation points. He grabs a few cans of it and places it in the cart. 

“Nah, not really.” Eggsy reaches down into the cart and gives Cat a little scratch under chin from where she’s in a cat carrier that they got a few minutes ago. “I don’t have anything to do today anyways.”

“I do appreciate the help, Eggsy.” Merlin says before sneezing into his elbow. Even in the faint air conditioning of the grocery, he’s still getting chills despite the fact he’s wearing a parka over his sweater.

“You look like you should be in quarantine, mate.” Eggsy hands him tissue. 

“I’m fine really,” He blows his nose. “I’ll be well enough to go back tomorrow.”

“Lookin’ like that? Evaine’ll duct tape you into a box and ship you back home,” Eggsy tells him. Cat starts licking his finger. “At least you’ll have this little fella keepin’ you company.”

“She won’t be staying for long,” Merlin looks at Cat. She blinks up at him with her tiny little adorable eyes. “I’m only taking care of her for a bit then I’ll drop her off at an animal shelter.”

Eggsy looks at the cart. So far, they’ve already got some wet cat food, a litter box, a few bags of cat litter, and a cat bed. He looks back at Merlin. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss. Or you’ll be the boss soon.”

“No, I won’t.” He starts walking to another aisle. Why do cats need wet food _and_ dry food?

“Merlin, literally everybody thinks you should be Arthur.” Eggsy says. “I aint’ sure about the recruits when one of ‘em becomes Geraint, because those lot are terrified of you. But it’s a pretty conclusive vote.”

“Percival would make a good Arthur.” Merlin says as he picks up a bag of “premium” cat food. He scans the ingredients, trying to find out what makes it so special. 

“Percival’s got a real bad temper for a guy who’s so damn quiet.” Eggsy starts skating through the aisle again. “He’d be a terrible diplomat.”

“ _I’d_ be a terrible diplomat.”

“Says the guy who single-handedly got Europe through the aftermath of V-Day.”

“What about Harry? He’s been Kingsman longer than I have.” Only by two years, but it’s the same either way.

“Harry would hate bein’ Arthur.”

“I don’t know where you’ve been for the past few months but, I too, would hate being Arthur.”

“Yeah, but at least you’d be good at it.” He slides to a stop in the middle of the aisle. “Harry would be absolute shit at it.”

“You’re just saying that because he’s your favorite.” Merlin says, dumping the “premium” cat food into the cart.

“True,” Eggsy nods. “But if I voted for Harry, he’d probably bitch at me for a month. Maybe longer.”

“If it gets you to not vote for me, I will take great pleasure in bitching at you for a year.” Merlin tells him.

“Oh, please.” Eggsy grins. “You’re more of a gentleman than Harry is, which aint’ really sayin’ much since Harry’s actually a prick. Point is, you’d never bitch at anybody. Not really.” Merlin doesn’t even try to deny it. “The only downside of you bein’ Arthur is the fact that we’d have to start calling you _Arthur_.” He leans down to pet Cat again. She’s getting spoiled. “That’d be pretty weird. What’s your real name anyways?”

“None of your business,” He sniffs.

“Oh come on,” Eggsy starts pushing the cart out of the aisle. 

“Lay off it, _Gary_.”

Eggsy winces. “Okay, I deserved that one. You win.”

When Eggsy is helping him load the things out of the cart into the checkout lane, Merlin asks, “Have you been paying attention?”

“To what?”

“The two lovely individuals on your five o’clock who have been following us since we left my building.” Merlin says.

“Them? Yeah, course.” Eggsy nods. Out of the corner of Merlin’s eye, he can see them. Two stocky looking men very thoroughly examining a display of magazines. “But since you didn’t say nothin’, I figured to just shut up. Thought I was being paranoid or summat.”

“I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure just yet.” He says when the cashier starts packing up their stuff. Merlin grabs the cat carrier. “But if they’re willing to follow us here, staying for almost an hour whilst we shop for cat supplies, they’re definitely something. Possibly a threat.”

“Want me to tail ‘em?”

“No. That’d be too obvious.” Merlin says. “I already made the mistake of destroying their signal tapper without tracing a signal, if they’re connected to that. They’ll catch on to that soon. If you follow them, they’ll figure it out earlier.”

“That’s a bit risky innit? Leaving ‘em alone.” Eggsy says, carrying the heavier bags without Merlin asking him to. 

“Eggsy, I’ll have you know that I’ve been trained for things like this. I can handle myself.” He sniffles, then sighs when the sneeze doesn’t push through.

“Sure, guv.” 

\---

Eggsy takes his leave after he drops off the supplies back at Merlin’s flat. He says he’ll send Roxy to check up on him next time, like Merlin is a child who can’t take care of himself.

He sets up the litter box, much to Cat’s endless delight and his button fern’s relief. Merlin gives her some of the wet cat food, just a little bit, just for her to get used to it. She prowls around it in caution for a good two minutes before diving in. If Cat is this suspicious with everything, she and Merlin could really get along well together.

Speaking of paranoia.

He switches on his desktop computer, three screens and all, and he gets to work. He taps into the surveillance system of the building which is partly the building’s actual meager security, but mostly some of Merlin’s own installments. He set them up when he moved in because, again, see aforementioned paranoia.

His screens light up, showing him each of his camera’s view. There’s the lobby, the elevator, and the back entrance. Merlin’s got cameras in the stairwell, the main hallway of each floor, the alleys that surround the building, and the roof, where a pigeon is doing a lovely job of covering up the entire lens.

He spends the rest of the day in a tiring cycle of sneezing, coughing, drinking orange juice, taking naps on his couch that only last for half an hour, and tinkering with the signal tapper and the bugs he’d collected.

It’s all simple equipment, but since he shorted them out before he can trace a signal, he tries rummaging around for something else that could identify it. By the time the sun has start to set, he’s come to the conclusion that his efforts were completely fruitless. 

Cat starts nudging him when he’s halfway through his second time taking apart the signal tapper. She hops into his lap and dozes off there. Merlin thinks that’s a pretty good idea and follows suit.

When he wakes up, it’s almost eight, according to his glasses which he seem to have forgotten to take off. His headache is gone and he can actually breathe through his nose again, but his throat is killing him and his back is stiff thanks to the couch. Also, Cat is nowhere to be found.

He checks the kitchen, then the bedroom, then under the couch. Merlin eventually finds her in the bathroom along with a roll of toilet paper ripped to shreds.

“Bad Cat,” He groans. Cat looks up at him in the middle of her little paper battleground, not understanding a thing because she’s a cat. “Very, very bad.”

Cat tries to appease him by rubbing herself on his leg, as if saying “I’m not bad. I’m perfect and furry and cute, remember? You love me.” but Merlin is having none of it.

He nudges her to the side. “No. Absolutely not.” He says. “I swear, you’re just like Bartholomew—”

And Merlin’s just gone and made himself sad by reminding himself about his old dog. Great.

The recruitment process for the title of Merlin was vastly different from what he now conducts for the Kingsman agents. Same procedure. Pass the test, you move on. Fail, you go home. But the methods were different. The training was different. While there _was_ physical training, there was a lot less of it. Most of the tests were the behind the scenes sorts. Quite a lot of engineering. Lots of people skills. Lots of simulations. They even had their own special version of the _Kobayashi Maru_. An unbeatable scenario where you have to lead the agent through an impossible mission. He’d only beaten that test without killing everybody five years into being Merlin because fuck no-win scenarios. There’s always a way.

Two tests remain the same, though. The train test and the dog test. Merlin had gotten through the train test with general ease because once the initial panic died down, logic came in and pointed out the false rails, the details, the holes, and figured the situation out. He was the only one to pass that test, ensuring himself as Merlin right there.

But apparently the dog test still had to be done because Kingsman was run by sadists.

Here’s the thing: the dog test was slightly different for his position.

Merlin wasn’t asked to shoot a blank at his dog, a blank he surely would’ve noticed the moment the gun would be handed to him. No, it was different.

Merlin was asked to give away his dog forever.

So he gave Bartholomew away.

He knows now that that choice was infinitely more difficult than blowing up the heads of half the world’s leaders.

It was the worst he’d ever felt, back then. Merlin had looked into Bartholomew’s big old Beagle eyes, confused and sad, not understanding as to why Merlin wasn’t holding him anymore, why Merlin was walking away.

“I was never very fond of the dog test either,” His predecessor, an old woman, very regal looking despite her hair going gray at the edges, had told him. People in the Merlin position see very little live fire, so it’s more common for them to survive until retirement. “I bawled my eyes out when I did it. The agents have it a lot easier. They get to keep their dogs. But not us. We have to let them go.”

“I understand the notion,” He replied stiffly. He was twenty three and was very used to knowing everything. He was used to having it all figured out. He wasn’t used to how his mind kept going back, kept thinking about how Bartholomew had looked at him. “Being in this position means making decisions that come with long term consequences that one has to commit to.”

“Sure,” She said. “I just thought it was because they wanted Merlin to be somebody who was fucking heartless. Your explanation is certainly more poetic. Doesn’t matter anyways. Welcome to Kingsman, Merlin.”

“Thank you, Merlin.”

“Oh, it’s Rosa now. You can keep Merlin for yourself. Lord knows it’s leagues better than the name you’ve got.”

So he gives away his dog.

But he doesn’t stay away.

Merlin keeps an eye at Bartholomew at the shelter. He pulls some strings to make sure he gets adopted by a good owner and not some crapsack looking for a guard dog. Bartholomew ends up with a lovely little girl who plays football on the weekends and she renames him Skip. It’s a terrible name, but Merlin lets it slide. Bartholomew grows to be old and fat and happy and dies peacefully when Merlin turns thirty one. 

He passes the dog test, but he didn’t really get the other bit. Making decisions then committing to them. Committing to decisions also means moving on. Merlin failed that bit when it came to Bartholomew. Decisions with long term consequences. He’s gotten a lot of those in his life.

Merlin missed the grenade that killed Lee Unwin. Merlin didn’t push for James to get a replacement pair of glasses, leaving him unattended on the mission that killed him. He isn’t sure how, but Merlin knows he could have done _something_ to have prevented Harry’s “death”. Those things are on him and he’s shit at moving on. He kept an eye on his dog for eight years, so he also has the tendency to carry ghosts on his shoulder.

Merlin usually doesn’t have time to ponder on these things for too long, the job always calls, his mind is, thankfully, always somewhere else. But now, standing in Cat’s little biodegradable wreckage, those thoughts have time to creep up on him. Just a little bit.

He’d be a shit Arthur.

“Cat,” Merlin bends down, carries Cat into his arms. “That was bad. You mustn’t do that ever again, alright?”

Cat looks effectively chastened as she licks Merlin’s hand in supplication. 

Merlin reheats some of the leftovers he took from the cafe he and Eggsy had eaten at before shopping. While that’s in the microwave, he feeds Cat too. She seems to eat slower this time, stopping every few seconds to look at Merlin like he’s something that needs to be watched.

They eat together in silence. Merlin watches Cat. Cat watches Merlin. This goes on until both Merlin and Cat have finished.

He sets up security alarms on his surveillance, gets ready for bed, then he falls asleep even though he’s been sleeping on and off for the past few hours.

His last thought is that Cat still sleeps next to him despite the fact that she has her own cat bed outside. Merlin doesn’t kick her out though. He just sleeps.

\---

Merlin wakes up with what feels like a fever and what sounds like a dozen alarms coming from his computer outside, Cat meowing her damn heart out, and somebody knocking at his door repeatedly. Apparently, Merlin was a terrible person in a past life, because the universe has decided to ruin every morning Merlin ever has.

He left his door open last night so he goes to the living room and mutes his computer. He doesn’t even look at what set the alarms off. It’s too early for this. Cat is scratching at the front door, knocking not ceasing at all. 

“Cat, shhhhhh.” Merlin tells Cat while he reaches under his couch for his Glock. He fetches his silencer from where it’s wedged behind the cushions and screws it onto the muzzle. “I’m coming! Fucking shut up.” He yells, and thankfully, they stop. He bends down and grabs Cat with the hand that isn’t carrying the gun. “Shhhhhh, Cat. Please be quiet, dear.”

“Well good morning, sunshine.” Roxy greets when he opens the door. Her eyes look at the gun, then they look at Cat. She decides at that moment that Cat is much more interesting. “And hello to you too.” Then she looks at Merlin who maybe looks like he’s about to murder somebody, cat in hand notwithstanding. “Eggsy told me you had a cat. I thought he was bullshitting me.”

“Why are you here?” Merlin says. It’s quite rude, he’ll realize later, but it’s too early for this. He decides to let Roxy know this. “It’s too early for this.”

“It’s eleven,” She says.

“Early,” Merlin repeats, then he lets her in.

“You look terrible, by the way.” Roxy says, sitting down on the couch, setting her tote bag aside. “Have you been resting? Because you don’t look like you’ve been resting.”

“I’ve been resting,” Merlin says as he places his gun in a fruit bowl on the counter which only contains oranges, thanks to Eggsy. 

“Resting means the opposite of working, you realize.” Roxy looks at the living room. There’s an empty bottle of orange juice on the floor and the carcass of the signal tapper on the coffee table. 

“There were things that needed doing.”

“Ah, yes. Eggsy told me about your stalkers too. Though mostly he just talked about your little friend.” 

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Roxy, meet Cat.” He sets Cat down on the couch. She immediately warms up to Roxy, settling in Roxy’s lap like the traitor she is. “Cat, meet Roxy.”

“You named your cat Cat?” She starts petting Cat.

“No,” Merlin goes to the kitchen. “Cat is just easier to say than ‘the cat’. You want anything to drink?”

“No, thank you.” Roxy says. “I’ve already had coffee and I know your orange juice has pulp in it. I told Eggsy to get that kind specifically because you’re weird.”

“How are things at HQ?” He asks instead of defending his affinity for orange juice with pulp. Merlin starts a pot of coffee with the grounds Eggsy bought from Monaco.

“Nothing of import,” Roxy says. “You should be resting. Don’t stress yourself out about work until you’re well.”

“So that means there _is_ something to worry about at HQ then.”

“It’s really not as bad as you think,” She tells him. “A few fires here and there, but no injuries.” A beat. “Okay, no severe injuries. But the tech department hasn’t collapsed in your absence. They just aren’t used to working without you lurking around them.” 

“I don’t lurk,” He grumbles, grabbing a mug.

“Amelia told me they’re getting quite giddy down there,” Roxy says. 

“And what of the recruits?”

“Percival unsettles them,” She says as Merlin pours his coffee. “He doesn’t talk much and he’s awful hard to read. The recruits seem to honestly not know whether or not to be afraid or relieved that you’re sick.”

“How about those cyber-attacks?” He reenters the living room. Cat has made herself very comfortable in Roxy’s lap.

“Incredibly pitiful,” She pets Cat as Merlin takes a seat. “They can barely get past your firewalls and failsafes. The only problem is that they’re very clean with their failures. We haven’t gotten a trace on them yet.”

“Same story with the signal tapper,” Merlin takes a sip of his coffee. “Shoddy work, but very clean.”

“You think they’re connected.” 

“It’s too much a coincidence to _not_ be.” And, huh. The coffee isn’t half bad. It sort of distracts him from how his eyes feel sore and his body is too warm. Sort of. He should make Bors buy more when he goes to Monaco next week. 

“It makes sense,” Roxy says. “Attack the leader while he’s sick with the flu.”

“I’m not the leader,” Merlin tells her. “I’m not Arthur. And I won’t become Arthur.”

“I don’t get why you’re so against it, is the problem.” She says. Basic NLP technique. Get others to answer the questions for you. “You already do at least seventy percent of what somebody in the Arthur position does already. It’s just a title, by this point.”

“If I’m Arthur, who would take my place as Merlin?” Deflect.

“We’ll grab one of the feistier boffins from the tech department until you hold a formal recruitment process,” Roxy says. “You can still be the head handler.”

And Merlin wants to deflect more. He wants to say something to shut down the entire conversation. But Merlin is tired. He’s tired and he feels like shit and the coffee is good but not good enough to make the world forget about him for five goddamn minutes. So he says, childishly, petulantly, and quietly, “I don’t want to be Arthur.”

Then he shrugs a bit. Just to diffuse some of the tension in the air.

“Why not?” She asks. Straightforward. 

“I’d be terrible at it.”

“We both know that isn’t true.” 

“Arthur can’t make mistakes, Roxy.”

“And when have you ever made mistakes?”

“A number of times.”

And she doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. He figures she gets it, even just a little bit. Roxy says, “That’s odd. It’s hard for me to picture you making mistakes, or being bad at anything in general. Maybe ice skating, since ice skating is terrible.” She smiles. “Me and Eggsy went ice skating a few weeks ago. He was so good at it I wanted to punch him in the face. He could do _twirls_. I was just holding onto the side railing, wobbling like a newborn colt every time he’d try to get me to go in the center of the rink.”

Roxy launches off into stories, some about her and her missions, things he’d read in her reports but not heard from her perspective, others about her and Eggsy being idiots, and a few with Percival. Merlin is thankful for these, for the moments of peace she gives him. This isn’t her admitting defeat, as much as Merlin would probably enjoy the concept. This is Roxy taking a strategic retreat. Back off. Leave space. Come back and finish the real conversation later.

Once Merlin has finished his coffee and Cat has woken up after Roxy laughed too loudly, she comes back with, “My point here is that, you’re the best option for Arthur. Everybody thinks so except for you.” And Merlin is sure that what she was saying before had nothing to do with the topic of Arthur. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure we’ll all still call you Merlin.”

“What on earth will we call the boffin in my place then?” 

“Merlin Junior.”

“Awful,” Merlin says. He stands up to return the mug when he remembers about the alarms.

Checking his computer, he checks the surveillance. The first alarm was tripped by that same fucking pigeon on the roof, but the second one is a bit more interesting. Roxy comes over and leans in to look at footage. It’s from the alley behind the building. A man in a surgical mask and a hoodie is crouching down on the ground, spending a few minutes tinkering with what looks like a cardboard box, before leaving. According to the time stamp, this happened at around seven. His computer identifies it as a machine, but it can’t identify _what_ it does much to Merlin’s frustration.

“Stay here,” Roxy claps him on the shoulder before he can say anything. “I’ll check it out. Meanwhile, you can go take your damn temperature and rest.”

She doesn’t leave until she’s herded Merlin back into his bedroom. She at least leaves Merlin his laptop, but with the strict order not to do anything strenuous. Roxy also lets Cat in, with no orders of any sort because spending time with Cat is strenuous by definition. She seems to approve when he bundles himself into his blanket, then she leaves to fetch whatever it is that’s in that box.

“What did you find?” He asks her when she returns. Merlin’s kept himself busy by playing with Cat using a spare shoelace after Solitaire on his laptop got boring.

“Transmitter,” Roxy holds up a tiny device with a antenna poking out of the top. “I checked your computer and they were trying to get into your servers through this. They failed, of course.” She says. “But whoever is doing this is very keen on, well, you.”

“Well you were right about that part at least,” Merlin lets Cat catch the shoelace. She chews on the aglet. “They know I’m less than healthy _and_ that I’m not at HQ. They think this is their best time attack both me and Kingsman. They think they’ve got the upper hand. The only way to get them to back off is if I come ba—”

“Oh no you won’t. You’ll be staying right here.” She interrupts him, placing the transmitter outside. Roxy places the back of her hand against Merlin’s neck before he can protest. “Your temperature is above forty, I take it?”

“Thirty nine point eight,” He grumbles as she pulls her hand back. “Good guess.”

“Round it off,” She says. “And rest. Take a nap or something. I’m banning you from tinkering with anything. Do you have anything in your fridge?”

Merlin pulls the shoelace from Cat, dragging her up the bed. “No.”

“Then I’ll go out for a bit to buy some food. Maybe some ingredients since Harry said he wanted to drop by tomorrow.” The last thing Merlin needs to get better is Harry Hart in close proximity of him. Merlin doesn’t even care that the man is an incredible cook. Merlin does not have the energy to deal with _Harry Hart_. “I won’t be too long.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” He lets go of the shoelace altogether. Cat is having the time of her life.

“Do what?”

“You _know_ what, Roxy.”

“I haven’t got the faintest idea on what you’re going on about.” She says sweetly, turning to leave. “Take a nap. I’ll lock your door and restart your alarms, alright?”

“Roxy—”

“What?”

“Thank you,” Merlin says. “And pass that on to Eggsy as well because I’m sure he only thinks I thanked him for lugging around my groceries.”

Roxy smiles, then she says, “You’re welcome.”

\---

Roxy comes back a little over an hour later with takeaway and more groceries, boasting about how much better his fridge looks now that there’s food in it. They eat in his bedroom, chatting more about how Kingsman has not crashed and burned without Merlin’s constant supervision. She grabs her laptop from her bag and starts working on a report while Merlin tries to force his fever out by concentrating very hard. She stays even after she’s finished her report, after she closes her laptop, after Merlin tells her that he’s fine, that she can leave. Roxy just starts reading one of the books he’s got in the living room, and they go on like that. 

She leaves after she feeds Cat for him, when it starts to get dark. She says she’ll return the book when he comes back to HQ in good health. 

Still full from their late afternoon lunch, Merlin just eats one of the oranges while he disassembles the transmitter for no real reason. He isn’t going to find anything new, but he’s bored out of his mind. 

Then Cat starts meowing.

“Stop that,” He says. Cat is scratching at the door, hair on end, pacing back and forth. He glances at his computer and realizes that one of his camera’s the one in the stairwell, is nothing but static.

With a curse, he grabs his Glock. It’s too fucking early for this, he thinks. It’s ten in the evening but it’s still too damn early.

He opens his door and Cat just dashes out before he can stop her.

“No. Cat!” He yells. Cat doesn’t pay him any attention. She speeds down the hallway. “Shit. Fuck. Shit.” He says quieter. Charlotte, the only other tenant on this floor, is actually home tonight. She’s a flight attendant, so she’s usually out enough for her not to question Merlin’s habits, but she’s home tonight.

“Shit,” He says again to the empty hallway. Like most hallways, it doesn’t reply.

“Cat,” He makes his way out of his flat, closing the door behind him quietly. “Where the hell have you gone off to now?”

Merlin hears soft, shuffling noises from the stairwell. He leans against the the doorway, flicking the safety off, before he starts walking down, following the sounds.

Meow, he hears from below. 

He looks past the banister down to the flight below him, and he sees a man pointing what is very obviously a gun at Cat.

At Merlin’s Cat.

Merlin shoots him in the foot.

The man goes down on one knee, dropping his gun, with a shout and Cat runs out of the way. Merlin makes his way down the rest of the stairs, ducks when the man throws a terribly aimed knife at him, and shoots him again in the other leg. He tries to crawl to his gun but Merlin kicks it out of his reach. Merlin steps on the man’s leg, just below where he shot him, and presses down until the man stops struggling. 

“Stop trying. You’re embarrassing yourself,” Merlin tells the man because honestly. Merlin has got a pounding headache and he isn’t even trained for hand to hand combat, but he was able to take the man down. Embarrassing. 

He bends down, grabbing Cat quickly while keeping his gun trained on the man. Cat makes her way onto Merlin’s shoulder.

“Good Cat.” He tells Cat. Then he focuses back on the man. He takes in his appearance. Dark hair cropped short. A jacket too thin for the weather. Threadbare looking pants. This isn’t a professional. This is, for the lack of a better word, a thug. Whoops. “Who do you work for?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re—”

Merlin presses down on the man’s leg, cutting him off. 

“Let’s try again. Pay attention,” He sighs. “Who are you working for? If you’re actually working for anybody. How did you disable my surveillance? How did you _know_ about my surveillance? How did you know about _me_? And finally, what information are you after?”

“Alright, _alright_! Fucking cool it, old man.” The man says quickly when Merlin threatens to press down again. “Rich looking prick told me I could make some easy money if I plugged this virus shit into one of your fucking computers.” The man fishes a flash drive from his pocket, tossing it to Merlin.

“I want names and specifics,” Merlin pockets the flash drive.

“I didn’t get his name— _fuck_ I’m not lying I fucking swear!” Merlin eases off his leg. “I don’t know anything about him or about you or about any damn _surveillance_ shit, okay? Fuck, man.”

Merlin sighs. Cat starts licking his face. This was useless. 

From upstairs, he hears footsteps. Shit. 

Charlotte.

“Thank you. I appreciate your honesty,” Merlin tells the man. “And do know that I’m sorry for this.”

“For what?”

And Merlin kicks him down the stairs.

“Hello?” Charlotte calls out as Merlin takes the stairs two at a time back up. “Angus, is that you?”

“Hi, yes. Hello Charlotte.” He says twitching at the name. It isn’t his real name, but it’s terrible all the same. Harry had been the one to put that as his name when he moved in here. “Good evening. I’m sorry if I had bothered you.”

“All that ruckus was you?” Charlotte asks. Merlin finally sees her as he tucks his Glock at his back. Charlotte is holding a rolling pin as if she’s ready to hit somebody upside the head. “I heard a bunch of thuds and thought you were getting robbed.”

“No, no.” He tries to smile reassuringly. “No robberies. Just me. You see, my cat had escaped and I, er, slipped on that last step.”

“Oh you poor thing,” She says. From below, the man lets out a low groan which Merlin covers up with a coughing fit he doesn’t actually need to fake.

“Excuse me,” Merlin says. “I’m a bit ill too.”

“Well then get back inside before you make yourself worse,” She tuts. 

Charlotte walks him back to his flat, leaves with a smile and a promise to come over if he needs anything, anything at all. When he closes the door, Cat hops off his shoulder and he grabs his phone. He dials HQ.

“Cleanup needed,” He says. “One hostile, apprehended, disarmed, and injured. Two bullet wounds, superficial, but still in need of medical attention. Keep for questioning.” He hangs up.

“And you,” Merlin turns to Cat. Cat looks up at him. “That was very dangerous. Don’t ever do that again, understand?”

Cat meows. Of course she doesn’t understand, but he’ll take what he can get.

\---

The next day, Merlin is on his couch wrapped in a blanket eating cereal with Cat dozing at his side when his door opens and Harry lets himself in.

“Every day I regret giving you a key,” Merlin says, not bothering to look at him. He’s got better things to do. He’s got cereal to eat.

“You don’t really mean that,” Harry says easily, patting Merlin on the shoulder as he passes him by, going straight for the kitchen. “I’ll be making you food, so you’ll be professing your love for me later.”

“Never,” Merlin tells him, crunching on his cereal. “What of the man from last night? Did you find anything out?”

“No, he was completely useless.” Merlin can hear the sound of his faucet running. The soft clang of cutlery. “Medical patched him up enough to survive, shot him with around four amnesia darts, and dropped him off not too far from a hospital. Did you really have to shoot him, though?”

“That’s just _rich_ coming from Mr. I Beat Up A Bar Full Of Civilians Just to Impress—”

“You’ll never shut up about that, will you?” He walks back into the living room, apron donned. “You’re supposed to be the bigger man, Merlin. Shooting him was messy.”

“He was going to shoot Cat.”

“Ah, yes. Ms. Morton told me all about this one,” Harry looks at Cat but does not make a move closer. He was always a dog person. Specifically, he was the kind of dog person that thought that all cats were evil. “You couldn’t have thought of a better name?”

He looks Harry straight in the eye, “Mr. Pickle.”

“Perfect name for a dog.”

“You’d probably name Cat something ridiculous. Like Princess.”

“She’s certainly being treated like one.” Merlin looks down to see Cat sipping the milk from his bowl.

“Cat!” He stands up, taking the bowl with him. “Bad.”

Merlin goes to the kitchen, blanket still around him like a cape, and drops the bowl in his sink. Around the kitchen, Harry has already gotten various ingredients set out, a pot of water on the stove, and the cutting board has been unearthed from its home in Merlin’s cupboard. Cat is bumping her head against Merlin’s leg and he obliges her, carrying her and petting her chin.

“You should name it.” Harry says as he starts to cut vegetables.

“Her.”

“Her. Give her a real name.”

“I’m trying not to get too attached,” Merlin says as he strokes Cat’s back. Cat purrs, satisfied.

“It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?”

“What are you making?” Merlin asks instead of answering.

“Go back to bed. I’ll surprise you,” Harry tells him. “I’ve been told by my sources that you’ve been doing a wonderful job of not resting.”

“And what about the nefarious organization that wants to bring Kingsman down through me?”

“You can’t possibly believe that I’d allow anything nefarious to enter this building while I’m here,” Harry salts the water, then dumps the vegetables in. “I’m wounded. Truly.”

“I’ve done enough resting. Kingsman is under attack.” Merlin grabs a stool near the kitchen counter and plants himself there. He’s sick, pun not intended, of resting. He’s sick of being immobile and useless. Sick of being a sitting duck.

“It’s not enough until you’re well again,” Harry says. “You don’t have to sleep. You can just sit there and glare at me while I cook, if it makes you feel better. But stop thinking about potential threats for now. I’ve already sent Eggsy to collect intel on who might be interested in taking us down.”

“Roxy is better at those kinds of missions,” He puts Cat on the counter. He grabs an orange from the fruit bowl, rolling it around in front of her. She watches, absolutely entranced. 

“Ms. Morton is busy handling the tech department in your absence,” Cat tries to catch the orange, but Merlin rolls it away. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were developing a tie pin that could be used as a flash grenade? _And_ a Tricorder.”

“Which one blew up?” Merlin asks. He really hopes it isn’t the Tricorder. Prototypes of that keep sparking to death when it scans even the slightest drop of blood.

“The tie pin.” Oh thank god.

“I told them not to test it until they’ve got the reactants stabilized,” He sighs. “Which meant that they went and did just that the moment I left.”

“Amelia tried to stop them.”

“Good to know that there’s at least one person down there with a brain.”

“She’d make a good Merlin for when you rise up to Arthur.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Cat catches the orange. Her tiny claws puncture the skin.

“You should really just accept it, you know.”

“I’ll vote for you.”

“That’s very irresponsible,” Harry says and he’s not wrong. Harry is the type of person who would accidentally start a war because he said a bad joke or ruffled the wrong feathers for _fun_. “And you’re very responsible.”

“Just because it’s inevitable, doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Merlin pries Cat off the orange after a quick search on his glasses that confirm that oranges are toxic to cats. He sets her on the ground.

“By all means, fuss all you want.” Harry tells him. “You can be fussy and good at your job at the same time. I’m quite sure that’s what you’ve been doing for your entire career anyways.”

“Harry, shut up. Stop bullying the sick man.”

“Oh, so _now_ you’re sick. How convenient.” Harry’s got a pan on the stove now. “Being Arthur will be good for you. You can get used to your real name again.”

“I survived twenty three years with that abomination and I’m sure as hell never going back to it.”

“Amelia will just have to be Merlin Junior, then. Or maybe we could call you Senior?”

Merlin lobs the orange at Harry’s head, but he ducks and it goes out the window. Prick.

Harry finishes making the first thing on his agenda: pumpkin soup. It tastes heavenly. He begrudgingly eats spoonful after spoonful, making sure to glare at Harry whenever he looks at him from the stove, smirking like the smug bastard he is. When Harry finishes the second thing (chicken teriyaki packed into a plastic container and put in his fridge for later), he helps himself to some of Merlin’s coffee, and he sits at the counter.

“What’s going on?” Merlin asks when he notices that Harry’s been rapidly texting, eyes trained on his phone.

“It’s astonishing how many acronyms Eggsy uses when he texts,” Harry sighs. “What does NGL mean?”

Merlin snorts. “Not gonna lie.”

“Ah, well that makes more sense then.” Harry pockets his phone. “It seems quite a lot of people want to take down Kingsman. An organization powerful enough to stop Valentine and stitch back what was left of the world has attracted many different characters. But that’s all everybody knows. They know there is a organization, but they don’t know anything past that.”

“So what, we have a mole?” And the thought makes Merlin sick, pun, again, not intended.

“Well we _had_ a mole.” Harry says. “Before Chester King died, he decided to blab to certain people about Kingsman. Most of those who knew were killed when the implants were activated, but some survived.”

“Have we got any names?”

“There’s where the problem is. There are too _many_ names.” God, Chester King was a bastard. “All very high profile. The rich sort. Sifting through all of them discreetly will take some time.”

“And we’ve got all the time in the world, don’t we?” Merlin sighs.

Merlin lets Harry dote on him for the day. He gets deposited on his couch and the a few minutes later, Harry hands him a cup of hot cocoa which tastes fucking amazing as usual. Harry fixes the camera in the stairwell, then he sets up the alarms again. Harry also goes to work boobytrapping his front door and all his windows. Any unauthorized intruder who tries to break in will get electrocuted and maced. Merlin really hopes Charlotte doesn’t suddenly feel the need to visit him through the window. Oddly enough, Harry goes to the effort of authorizing Cat. It’s very sweet.

“I could stay the night if you wish,” Harry offers when he realizes he’s got nothing else to do at Merlin’s flat.

“No, thank you.” He says. Merlin thinks back to their days at Eton. “You can leave. I can take care of myself.”

Harry starts tidying up. “Merlin, everybody knows that you’re incredible at taking care of everything, including, quite literally, the world’s peace. But you’re bullshitting yourself if you think that you’re any good at taking care of _yourself._ ” He says. “That’s the bit you use friends for, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh be still my beating heart,” Merlin drawls. “Thank you for the food. It was all disgustingly perfect.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry says. “Evaine says you can come back on Monday. She says she’ll test the Tricorder on you. I’ve been told that it only starts to smoke when it scans sick people, so you best be well by then if you want your prototype safe.”

“Only Evaine would keep my tech hostage,” Merlin shakes his head. “Goodbye, Harry.”

\---

A few hours later Merlin comes to the conclusion that he’s getting cabin fever. He hasn’t gone out of this building since shopping with Eggsy and it’s getting to him. He can stay here in his impenetrable fortress and wait for attacks as long as he wants, but he’s getting bored. Dangerously so. Even online Solitaire can’t fix this type of boredom.

So he fetches a leash, another thing they bought, clips it onto Cat’s collar, and goes out. 

They go to a park nearby. Cat actually refuses to continue walking the moment they leave the lobby, so she’s just been lounging on Merlin’s shoulder as he does the walking for the both of them. It’s cold out, but he doesn’t feel like he’s freezing to death anymore, his parka actually providing some warmth. 

Merlin takes a seat at a bench. Cat hops down to the ground and terrorizes any pigeon that comes close enough for her to hiss at. 

The sky is overcast. A warning for more rain. But even though he doesn’t have an umbrella, he doesn’t go back to his flat. Merlin sits, watches Cat as she sneaks up on a pigeon, and thinks.

The three people he’s got the most hold over have already told him that they were going to vote him as Merlin. He knew a lost battle when he saw one, and they won. He’s going to be Arthur and there’s nothing he can do about it. He resolves to making sure that he very obviously hates it the whole time, but that would get tiring. And Merlin is actually quite tired. 

Arthur is a big thing. Being Arthur is bigger than anything Merlin has done so far. Formally, the position of Arthur is the King; the leader. Informally, the position meant calling all the shots. When he’s Merlin, all he’s got is the screen and the agent he’s handling, all he’s got is the tech department and the gadgets that shouldn’t malfunction.

Being Arthur means having everything. 

Technically, he’s already been handling everything anyways since Chester had died, but that was informally. The name has weight and it feels too heavy. Arthur is Atlas carrying the weight of the earth. Arthur can’t make mistakes. 

Merlin has made mistakes.

Cat pulls him out of his thoughts when she starts purring up a storm at his feet. He picks her up and starts walking back to his flat. He’s had enough air for today. 

Then when he passes by the alley where he found Cat in the first place, he gets a police baton to the gut and a handkerchief that smells sickeningly sweet over his mouth.

Merlin puts up a damn fight, but the arm around his neck is strong and unyielding. He gets another blow from the baton, this time in the ribs for his efforts, from somebody else. There are three of them and—another blow. Struggling is beginning to be a bit of a...struggle. It’s getting harder to think.

His last thoughts as his vision starts to blur and his legs begin to buckle is 1) fuck, this is pathetic. And 2) I hope Cat gets away.

He thinks these things on repeat until his brain switches off and the darkness takes him.

\---

The humidity it the first thing that gets to him when he’s awake enough to comprehend anything. The next things are the following, though not in this exact order: headache, wrists and ankles are restrained to the chair he’s sitting in, damn it’s fucking humid.

Merlin opens his eyes and shuts them immediately because the light they’ve got in the basement is way too bright. It’s a very cliche looking basement they’ve got him in. Dirty, damp, chains hanging from the ceiling and everything. When the light isn’t as overwhelming, he gets a better view. 

One exit. A heavy looking door in the far corner that doesn’t look like it can be opened from the inside. Low ceilings. Some mold on the walls. There’s a table with a wonderful array of power tools and torture devices displayed on the top. This just gets better and better. He stretches his neck and gives all his limbs a quick pull. His wrists are handcuffed to the back of the chair. His ankles are zip tied to the legs. He’s barefoot and missing his parka, but he’s untouched other from that. Merlin takes a deep breath, and winces when he moves his torso. Broken ribs. His gut also feels bruised. But there’s nothing lethal.

Merlin sees his glasses on that table, and curses softly. There goes calling for help through morse code. But he programmed his glasses to automatically send a distress signal to HQ along with its current coordinates if he doesn’t input a certain password every four hours. This brings up two problems. First, is he getting signal down here? And second, how much time has passed exactly?

He’s still got his watch, but that’s really not going to help him right now. At least with the time. Merlin fumbles his wrists, getting a thumb on a button at the side of a watch, and activates his laser cutter. So what if Merlin takes a bit of the funding to make gadgets for himself? He’s allowed to treat himself.

The door screeches open and Merlin gets his first visitor.

His visitor is tall and bulky. A long scar runs across the side of his neck. Good for facial recognition. By all means and definitions, he looks as much of a thug as the man that had tried and failed to break into Merlin’s flat. The only difference is his eyes. He’s got this very gleeful, cruel look in his eyes. It’s something that screams experience. It’s something Merlin has seen through the video feeds of agents. 

“Good morning,” His visitor smiles, all malice.

“It’s morning?” Merlin asks. If it is, reinforcements are well on their way.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He goes to the table. His hands skim over a pair of pliers. 

“That would actually be very nice, yes.” Merlin says. He knows from experience, or at least from handling enough agents, that sassing the villain isn’t a good idea. But Merlin has nothing else to do while waiting for backup.

“I think _I’ll_ be the one in charge of asking the questions.” His hand grabs the police baton. Merlin is not looking forward to that reunion. “I know much more than you do right now, Wallace Graham.”

Merlin makes an effort to keep his eyes down. Make it look like the man got it right. Wallace Graham isn’t his real name but nobody needs to know that. Merlin has at least six fake identities out at a given time. The more they think they’ve got Merlin beat, the better. Besides, if his name was as decent as _Wallace_ , he wouldn’t have gone as Merlin for the past how many years.

“Listen, Wallace.” The man starts, grabbing the baton, swinging it back and forth threateningly. Merlin is halfway through slicing through the cuffs. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Merlin tries his best not to roll his eyes. It’s as if all these people read off of a script.

“The easy way consists of me asking questions and you answering them,” He says. “The hard way consists of those same things, but with a lot more injury and pain on your part.”

“How charming,” Merlin says. If his glasses are recording this, he’s going to get so much shit from Eggsy. It’ll be something along the lines of, _An’ you tell me not to mouth off to ‘em yet you’re pissing ‘em off like this?_ “What is it you want to know anyways?”

“Alright, we’ll start off easy. What is Kingsman?”

“Lovely tailor shop on Saville Row. Friend of mine gets his—”

The man swings. The baton hits his already tender abdomen. Merlin grits his teeth.

“Try again,” The man says. “We know you’re the leader. So you must know everything about your own damn organization.”

“I’m not.”

“I’m sorry, say that again?”

“I’m not the leader,” Merlin says over the soft click of his laser cutting clean through the cuffs. “At least not yet. I will be soon, though, despite my qualms about it.”

“Close enough,” The man shrugs. “My employer wants full control over Kingsman. The mighty organization that kept the world together. And you’re the powerful man behind that all.” This time, the man punches Merlin. Merlin swings his head with the impact to try and dull the blow, but it still hurts like a bitch. Any time now reinforcements. Any time. “Not feeling so powerful now, huh?”

He backs away while Merlin tastes blood. He thinks of little things. At least he doesn’t have a headache. That would have made this all very, very worse.

“The plan is this. We let you go and give you orders and you carry them out. We’ll control Kingsman from its head bitch. Our perfect little puppet.”

“And why would I just follow your every whim?” Merlin asks. He gives his wrists a stretch. “You haven’t got any leverage on me.” And he notices it.

His glasses which are sitting undamaged on the table behind the man is flashing. It’s very faint, but it’s flashing all the same.

.- - / ..-. .- -.-. .. .-.. .. - -.-- .-.-.- / ... .. - / - .. --. .... - .-.-.-

Well, Merlin isn’t going anywhere.

“Three people visited you at your flat ever since we started watching you,” The man says. “Now their faces didn’t come up with any names on our servers, which we expected, but we’ll find them. You won’t like what will happen when we find them. We’ll fuck your friends up real good.”

“They’re hardly people you could fuck up,” He says because Merlin has honestly had enough of this. All he wants is a good cup of coffee and a few recruits to terrify. “My friends are quite lethal. Even my cat could rough you up.”

This makes the man laugh. His eyes light up like it’s Christmas. Merlin’s blood runs cold. 

“What’s so funny?” Merlin asks. He adjusts his hold on the cuffs, holding it in between his knuckles. One punch will pierce bone.

“Nothing, nothing. Your cat’s the one you were walking when we nabbed you, yeah? Christ that thing was feisty. Nearly clawed the eye out of one of my boys. Don’t worry, though. It won’t be _misbehaving_ anymore.”

“What did you to my cat?”

“Killed it,” The man grins. “Was real noisy while we did it too.”

Merlin breathes in. 

“Have you ever watched the film John Wick?”

“Nope,” The man says. “Why?”

“No reason,” Merlin tells him. He clenches his fist around the cuff. “I quite liked it, is all.”

And he charges.

\---

“Merlin!” Roxy says when she kicks the door down right as Merlin lands a blow to the man’s kneecap with the police baton. He doesn’t have to worry about getting reprimanded for excessive force since _he’s_ practically Arthur anyways. “Oh thank god you’re alright. What are you doing?”

“Relieving stress,” He says, hitting the man one last time. The man groans pitifully.

“Whoa, shit. That’s brutal, bruv.” Eggsy comes in. Then he looks at Merlin. “You alright?”

“Physically, yes.” Merlin goes to the table, pondering on the pliers, but instead going for his glasses. He slips them on. 

“And how about not physically?” Roxy asks as they walk out. He feels a whole lot better with these two flanking his back. 

“He killed Cat,” He says.

Eggsy and Roxy look at each other. Then Roxy says, “So the cat we found in a sack outside that is very much alive and looks exactly like Cat is not _your_ Cat then?”

“Wait, you named your cat Cat?” Merlin thinks Eggsy asks, but he doesn’t really stick around to hear it clearly because he’s rushing out to the hallway.

It’s bloody carnage out here and he can’t help but feel very proud at all the kills. In the middle of all of it is Cat, looking unharmed but very shaken, much like the first time he found her, except instead of rain on her fur, there’s quite a lot of blood.

“Cat!” He says, and Cat essentially launches herself at Merlin. Fuck the broken ribs and the bruising. This is the best he’s felt all day.

Merlin will learn later that Eggsy had taken a video of the encounter on his glasses and sent it to Harry who was waiting in a getaway van outside as backup, but he lets it slide for now. He’s got better things to do than bitch at Eggsy. He’s got Cat that needs petting.

\---

“I’ve got two bits of good news, but one bit of bad news.” Evaine tells him from his bedside at HQ. “In what order do you want to hear them in?”

Before he can answer, Eggsy pipes in with, “Good, bad, then good again. It’ll be like a sandwich with shit filling.”

“Thank you for the analogy, Eggsy.” Harry says. Eggsy just grins. Roxy rolls her eyes at them. Why they’re all here at Medical with him, Merlin has no idea. But if he makes them go away, they won’t listen and will put lots of effort into being more insufferable. 

Evaine doesn’t give them any notice, thankfully. “Good news is that your cold is gone. Bad news is that three of your ribs are broken. Second good news is that your thing—” She holds up the prototype Tricorder, “—did not explode and works perfectly.”

“That’s good,” Merlin says, idly petting Cat. Technically, she’s not allowed in here, but just they _try_ to pull Cat away from him. “Wonderful.”

“He sounds a bit off,” Roxy says. “Are you sure he’s alright?”

“Yes, he’s perfectly fine. I just gave him a sedative that’ll let him rest the next few hours.”

“I did not consent to that,” Merlin says. But then again, it’s very hard to argue with chemicals in your blood stream.

“It’s standard medical protocol for Arthur, dear.” Evaine pats him on the head. “Anything to keep you well is to be done.”

“I’m not Arthur,” Merlin says.

“Oh, be quiet and rest you fool.” And that’s Harry. “Resume your fussing later. You’ve done quite enough now.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to call Merlin Arthur,” Eggsy says. “It’s just too weird. Arthur just makes me think of, you know.”

“Assassination through deadly poison?” Roxy adds.

“Yeah. Spot on.”

“We’ll call him Merlin. The new Merlin will be called Junior,” Harry says.

“What’s his real name anyways?” Eggsy’s flashing Harry what can only be described as _puppy eyes_.

“Tasgall Trahern Faulkner.”

“You’re shittin’ me.” Eggsy says while Roxy is having a coughing fit that sounds a lot like giggling. 

“When I met him, he went by Taz.”

“Fuck off,” Merlin says.

“Take a damn nap, Merlin.” Harry says.

And Merlin thinks, fine. He’ll rest just this once. Cat is starting to doze off on his chest anyways, so he figures resting can’t be that much of a bad idea. Merlin will need as much energy as he can get if he’s going to be Arthur. Especially if he’s going to be looking after these three idiots and more. There’s a lot of work to be done They still have to take down the league of nefarious people who want to bring down Kingsman, but they can do that later. 

So he goes to sleep. He goes to sleep to the sound of bickering, laughing, and Cat’s soft purring. He’ll let them do the looking after for now. Just for a little bit.

**Author's Note:**

> heres a list of things i am not, just as a way to exonerate myself from the real life inaccuracies that may or may not be in this fic: british. scottish. a medical expert. a person with any semblance of knowledge of NLP. a cat owner. a hacker. a person who looks things up on google for more than five minutes.
> 
> im [actualbird](http://actualbird.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. come say hi or yell kingsman at me. i hope you had fun.


End file.
